Amsterdam-style coffee shops line Boulder's Pearl Street Mall, offering up cannabis strains like White Widow and Sour Diesel for on-premises enjoyment -- served with a piping mug of arabica coffee. Across Boulder County in Lafayette, a string of marijuana shops on Public Road beckons customers inside to sample the inventory while tossing back an ice-cold microbrew.

Is this the brave -- and groovy -- new world this era of legalized marijuana promises to be in Colorado?

Not so fast, industry insiders and government officials say. A free-for-all, anything-goes cannabis culture is not what was envisioned by Amendment 64, which allows adults 21 and over in Colorado to possess and use up to an ounce of pot and grow six marijuana plants. The measure, approved by voters three months ago, was expressly crafted with built-in limits, among them discretionary powers by municipalities to decide whether retail marijuana shops will be allowed and a prohibition on "openly and publicly" consuming the drug.

In the now-famous words uttered by Gov. John Hickenlooper in the wake of November's vote, "don't break out the Cheetos and Goldfish too quickly."

For those curious about what a fully implemented marijuana legalization statute might look like at the ground level, take a look at what's in place now as the result of rules drawn up for the state's medical marijuana industry, said Matt Cook, the former director of Colorado's Medical Marijuana Enforcement Division.

Strict zoning restrictions have been put in place for dispensaries, sophisticated "seed to sale" tracking is required of all inventory, and a long list of security and surveillance measures need to be in place before a business can open.

"The model for the medical side, if you take the patient out of it, nicely fits on to the recreational side," Cook said. "I don't think that Colorado is going to turn into a mini-Amsterdam."

Towns and cities throughout the state that have permitted dispensaries to operate have created wide setbacks, keeping the facilities hundreds of feet away from schools, daycare centers, hospitals and each other.

"The buffers that exist have already created a cap on the number of businesses that are out there," Jeffrey Gard, a Boulder attorney who has long worked with clients in the medical marijuana industry, said. "I don't think the sky is falling with this. I don't think we're going to see a major explosion in the amount of adult marijuana use."

'The 800-pound gorilla'

Local governments aren't the only ones with a say on the recreational marijuana industry in Colorado, however.

Late last year, the governor formed a task force charged with coming up with recommendations for the State Legislature, where lawmakers will soon be trying to figure out how to implement the various aspects of Amendment 64. The Colorado Department of Revenue is required to adopt statewide recreational marijuana regulations by July 1.

But all of that painstaking work could be undone by the one entity that still classifies marijuana as a Schedule I controlled substance -- the federal government. Cook said recreational marijuana is untested ground -- Washington State is the only other state in the nation whose voters approved a similar measure in November -- and there's no way of knowing how the U.S. Department of Justice will react.

"The 800-pound gorilla in all of this is the federal government's response to this," he said.

Attorney Robert Hoban, a managing partner with Hoban & Feola in Denver and Colorado Springs who has more than a hundred clients in the medical marijuana industry, said many dispensary owners are in limbo about whether to convert their stores to recreational marijuana retail outlets as they try to divine what might come out of Washington, D.C. The fear, he said, is that the relatively lenient approach the Obama administration has taken with medical marijuana is not assured in a situation where the drug is no longer limited to medicinal use.

"If it's purely recreational, aren't we just thumbing our nose at the government? Is this going to draw the feds' attention and perhaps some enforcement action?" Hoban asked.

One of those stuck in wait-and-see mode is Evan Anderson, owner of 14er Holistics in Boulder, who acknowledges that operating as a medical marijuana dispensary in the far less restrictive world of recreational marijuana would be an "uphill battle." No longer will there be a need for customers to obtain a doctor's note, register with the state and present a "red card" to legally purchase cannabis.

But if recreational marijuana stores are going to be shut down by the federal government, he said, it makes no sense to convert. At least not yet.

"Nine months from now, will guys like me be getting a knock on the door from the feds for entering the recreational marijuana market?" said Anderson, who has run his dispensary on Mapleton Street for three years.

'Large customer base'

Brian Vicente, executive director of Sensible Colorado and the primary author of Amendment 64, sympathizes with dispensary owners' trepidation, despite the significantly larger market they could tap into by moving into recreational pot.

The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment reported that there were nearly 109,000 registered medical marijuana patients in Colorado at the end of 2012, with 9,436 of those patients in Boulder County. Between 486,000 and 616,000 adults 21 and over in Colorado use marijuana regularly, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration estimates.

"I think many of them will want to serve this large customer base but I've talked to some who want to remain in this medical world for fear of the federal government," Vicente said.

President Obama said in December that his administration doesn't intend to go after individual marijuana users in Colorado or Washington State but hasn't made clear the federal government's position on the commercial aspects of the industry, like retail stores and manufacturing facilities. Jeff Dorschner, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Denver, said the U.S. Department of Justice is still formulating a response to the unprecedented situation.

"The U.S. Attorney's Office in Colorado is working with (Department of Justice) officials in Washington, D.C. to determine what the department's next step is regarding the legalization of marijuana," he said. "There is no timeline regarding an announcement."

Peter Verchick, owner of Boulder Vital Herbs on Iris Avenue and Flower Power Botanicals in Larimer County, said if the federal government decides to largely leave the commercial recreational marijuana sector alone, it won't be difficult for Boulder dispensary owners to make the conversion to that world and abide by whatever regulations the city and state create.

"You have responsible owners used to heavy regulation at the local and state levels," Verchick said.

The first retail outlets selling recreational marijuana won't appear in Colorado until the beginning of next year.

No decision from Boulder

At this point, the future of recreational marijuana stores in Boulder -- or anywhere else in the county -- is far from assured, regardless of the federal government's stance on the industry.

Most cities and towns in Boulder County -- including Erie, Lyons, Longmont, and Lafayette -- have placed or are in the middle of placing moratoria on marijuana-related businesses until the state can draft its rules. Superior is set to vote Monday on outright banning the businesses, while Broomfield is formulating a moratorium that would last through early 2015.

Boulder City Attorney Tom Carr raised eyebrows in December when he suggested that the City Council impose a two-year ban on recreational marijuana stores. The idea got little support from council members. Councilwoman Lisa Morzel said at the time that invoking a ban "would be so non-democratic and would provoke the wrath of the public."

Boulder voters approved Amendment 64 by a three-to-one margin, which was, along with Jamestown, the strongest level of support for legalization of any community in Boulder County. Voters in the county overall passed the measure by a 66 percent to 34 percent margin.

"The governments have been very slow to react and embrace what has been the will of the voters," said Gard, the medical marijuana attorney. "I think it's concerning that Boulder was entertaining a ban on marijuana businesses."

The City Council is scheduled to take up the issue again next month. Gard said assuming Boulder decides to allow recreational marijuana stores on the same basis and with the same limitations it set for medical marijuana establishments, there won't be much of a change in the industry's footprint from what's out there today.

"There just simply isn't a lot of space left for new businesses coming in," he said. "We'd be lucky to add one or two stores to the roster of existing businesses."

But the sales tax revenues, he said, could go up appreciably with several times the number of marijuana users potentially visiting stores than currently are patronized by medical marijuana patients. According to the city's finance department, Boulder collected $708,000 in medical marijuana sales tax revenues during the first 11 months of 2012 -- less than 1 percent of the city's total sales tax revenues for the period.

"I think there is a huge upside to taxing recreational marijuana," Gard said. "Governments that partner with industry profit from industry, and those that don't, the industry flies the coop and goes somewhere else."

Mishawn Cook, Boulder's tax and license manager, said the city is in a good position to license recreational marijuana stores if the City Council decides to allow them. As of Feb. 1, her office had issued 67 licenses for grow houses, manufactured infused products facilities and medical marijuana dispensaries. Out of those 67 licensed operators, 27 are dispensaries.

"We have very coherent local laws, licensing structure and inspection structure," Cook said. "Our experience with medical marijuana definitely gives us a template to troubleshoot problems we may come across this time."

Regulated like alcohol

Colorado's commercial marijuana landscape will largely be guided by existing liquor regulations in the state, Matt Cook said, given that the primary aim of Amendment 64 was to have pot regulated like alcohol. As such, there will likely be a manufacturer, a wholesaler and a retailer, he said.

"It's just like any widget out there, except this is a Schedule I controlled substance per federal law and needs a little more oversight," Cook said.

Gard said what appears possible with recreational marijuana is the abandonment of the vertical integration model that was placed on medical marijuana dispensary owners, in which an owner has to grow 70 percent of their cannabis supply and the same people are charged with getting product from seed to sale. That mandate, he said, led to many forced relationships between cultivators and retailers that resulted in "a lot of hardship and a lot of litigation."

The governor's marijuana legalization task force hasn't yet agreed on a recommendation on how to structure the recreational marijuana industry, but a proposal that came before it last week would allow growers, distributors and sellers to operate independently, as occurs in the liquor industry.

While attorney Hoban agrees that steering away from medical marijuana's vertical structure would be good for smaller pot shops that can't afford to run and maintain grow facilities, there remain other hazards in their path. The biggest is industry consolidation, he said, which has already been underway for years with medical marijuana businesses.

"That could be bad for the mom and pops unless they carve out for themselves a niche," he said.

Hoban sees recreational marijuana largely being targeted at out-of-state tourists, with billboards along I-70 trying to lure skiers and hikers headed to the slopes to enjoy a few apres-ski and post-trek bong hits.

What is public?

But the question of where people will be able to consume marijuana is very much undecided. While Amendment 64 expressly outlaws public consumption, exactly what constitutes a public place has come up for debate.

The dispute came into sharp focus last week when Lafayette business owner Veronica Carpio took issue with a proposed moratorium the city had drafted that would not only have temporarily prohibited businesses that sell marijuana in the city but also those that allow its use on site. Carpio's business, The Front Tea & Art Shop, serves as a rendezvous spot for people bringing in their own cannabis to enjoy but doesn't charge a cover fee or sell any pot.

She and her allies claimed the city is going beyond what it is allowed by law to do because the amendment specifically upholds private consumption of pot as a constitutional right.

"Marijuana is supposed to be regulated like alcohol -- that's the whole precept of Amendment 64," Carpio said. "How many bars do we have in this town?"

Lafayette countered that Carpio's business is a public venue in the city's commercial district and that it has the right to stop the activity. The City Council passed the moratorium unanimously. So far, The Front Tea & Art Shop has not been served with a cease and desist order, Carpio said.

Anderson, 14er Holistics' owner, said it is unlikely commercial gathering spots for smokers will take off in Colorado. Not only is the non-public consumption stipulation in Amendment 64 a tough hurdle to clear, but business owners will be reluctant to open themselves up to lawsuits that could result from someone getting high at their smoking club or lounge, driving off and getting into an accident, he said.

It's particularly difficult because, unlike with alcohol, there is no consensus on what level of THC in the blood translates to legal intoxication, Anderson said.

"I don't think we will see consumption in any business until the science of quantifying intoxication from cannabis is perfected," he said.

Vicente said the entire landscape for recreational marijuana will take time and evolve over the years, and that not everything can be resolved in the first year of implementation. He said it's exciting to be one of the first states in the country to pave the way on an issue that has increasingly gained acceptance from the general public.

The state has a valuable blueprint with the medical marijuana regulations it has already established, Vicente said, and Boulder County's cannabis-friendly reputation gives the county, in particular, the opportunity to be on the front lines of what will inevitably become a national discussion.

"There is a lot to be optimistic about -- Colorado has demonstrated that marijuana can successfully be taxed and sold. We have a track record of success," Vicente said. "And I think Boulder County has the opportunity to be the leader on this."

Lightning has 5A state title aspirations once againIt was the only home plate the Legacy varsity softball field had ever known, and there it was last Saturday, in its tattered state, dug out of the playing surface and relegated to a lonely, unused existence. Full Story

The Boulder alt-country band gives its EPs names such as Death and Resurrection, and its songs bear the mark of hard truths and sin. But the punk energy behind the playing, and the sense that it's all in good fun, make it OK to dance to a song like "Death." Full Story